Foundation
by Lizard Pie
Summary: What they were, they never actually died; they simply changed form. After Prussia destroys one enemy, a new country tries to understand what had happened, and why this psychotic person was calling him a brother.


His head hurt.

Well, his entire body was in a great deal of pain, but it was his head that was screeching the loudest. Blood dripped from under his blond hair down into his eyes, and the child wiped it away as best he could to at least see clearly.

He sat in some field he'd never seen before. Wherever this was, it was decorated in corpses and those who soon would be. The stench of blood and fresh death draped over the whole thing like fog while it quickly shifted into an overwhelming amount of decay.

He would have loved to leave there, it was a horrible place. What would be nice was a warm meal, a bed, and the ability to nurse his wounds. A few things kept him ducked down, though, with his nose buried in the fluid-stained grass. First off, his leg wasn't able to be walked on; he'd already tried and it just wasn't going to happen.

Secondly, there was someone walking around. This older man was young and horrifyingly pale; and exceedingly tall if only because he was being watched from ground-level. Whoever it was, he would have been pure white were he not wearing fluids and bits of organ as proudly as if they were medals.

This man smiled broadly, his eyes wide and his pupils down to almost a pinprick. His shaky breath came out heavily, and his lips quivered with excitement as he scoured the land for just one more person to kill. It was very doubtful that this psychotic would really care whether the injured child he found was an ally or an enemy.

The child, though mental searching, had found that he had no recollection of anything from his name to how exactly he'd received all of the excessive injuries. All that seemed certain was that this person was the one who had caused each one of them; and hiding was the most important…

Oh god, he'd been spotted.

The man perked up. "Oh, please, Heiliges Römisches Reich," the pale man said coolly. He approached in a teasing manner; his feet crossed one over the other. "I'm begging you to try and run. It will be so much more satisfying when I finally split you open if there's at least a little more chase involved." The grin only grew as he continued forward and came to realize his enemy couldn't move. "So you'll just have to sit there, then, is that it? That's fine, too. I can make it nice and slow, in that case. With all the trouble you've caused me, it would be more fitting."

The taller man bent down, his face just a few centimeters from his enemy's. He pulled out a thick knife from its holster, and gently ran the blade over the quivering child's face. "I'm going to…"

The child looked up nervously as his attacker paused. He was frozen, horrified and confused, as the next action was not a move to attack. The older man seemed to smell the child, and then look him over with copious amounts of curiosity. The knife was sheathed rather quickly, but the investigation went on for several agonizing minutes more.

Finally, the man smiled. Well, he'd been smiling the entire time that the child had seen him, but this one was different. It wasn't homicidal or sadistic; it didn't mean any ill will at all, it seemed. This was a look of victory, pride, and… familiarity?

"You're a new country, aren't you?" The smile only grew as the older man picked the child up. This person hugged him tight and laughed joyously (even though this joy was, somehow, far scarier than what the child had seen before). "Willkommen bei Preußen, Brüderlein!" The man kissed the child happily, and left a smear of what hopefully was only blood on the youth's cheek.

The child stared at the man who seemed adamant to find every way possible in which to be horrifying. In the clutches of what seemed to be a bipolar assassin, the fact that he understood this strange language perfectly was a minor, but very present, concern.

Even more so that, when he opened his mouth to speak, that's exactly what came out.

"Who are you?" he asked, wriggled a bit in the man's arms in an attempt to be let go and allowed to flee.

The man tightened his grip a bit; in a manner which was firm and inescapable, and yet somehow loving enough to avoid inflicting further pain to his ward.

"I," the man said proudly. "Am the awesome and all-mighty Prussia." The movements of his head and the inflection of his voice showed exactly how much he believed every word that he said. "And you," He paused to tap the child lightly on the nose. "Are my little brother. You're the legacy of the Germanic people that I've been fighting so hard to achieve."

"I am?" The child asked, softly.

The now-dubbed Prussia laughed again. "Don't be scared, little brother. You're in the best hands in Euro... no, fuck that. In the _entire world_." Prussia carried the child off the battlefield, his face simultaneously the most contented and arrogant thing that had ever graced the face of the Earth. "And, under my loving direction, you're going to become even more powerful than I am. Aren't you excited?" Prussia looked down at the child in his arms. "Why do you look so upset?"

"I don't know what's going on..." he said, softly. "What happened?"

Prussia grinned and shrugged a bit. "Well, what you and I are, well, we rarely die. We just sort of change. I changed you into my little brother, and that's the best thing that ever could have happened."

It had become very apparent that he would get absolutely no answers out of Prussia; but for lack of anyone better he had to keep trying. "What was I before?" the child asked.

Prussia scoffed. "Like fuck that matters, some useless little jackass."

The child looked down.

"Come on, no being sad. This is the happiest day of either of our lives, okay?" Prussia bounced the child a bit as he re-adjusted him in his arms. "The founding of a new nation is something to be celebrated. And since you're a new nation based on the most awesome..."

"Who am I?" The child pressed.

Prussia paused. The hesitation was gone; and the intonation that had been used was an order more than anything. While normally that sort of audacity would have angered the empire into violence, it couldn't have been a better sign coming from this little one. He was exactly what Prussia had been working so hard to make to make for all these centuries_. Exactly_.

"You are Deutschland," Prussia said simply. "And you're never going to say that with anything less than all the pride you have within you." He kissed the newly-dubbed country on its still-aching forehead. "Because that's what happens when you're mine."


End file.
